Cité Soleil
Cité Soleil (Kreyole: Site Solèy; English: Sun City) commune located in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area in Haiti. , Haiti]] Comfortable living space, safety, security and luxury are some of the things that are uncommon among people living in Cite Soleil, an extremely poor town. As a matter of fact, it is considered one of the poorest and most dangerous towns in the world. About Cité-Soleil is the third most populous city in Haiti. With over a quarter million residents, it is also the third most populous city in both the Western Department and the Port-au-Prince Arrondissement. Often referred to as the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, the region has nearly 2 million people and is the largest in Haiti. Cité-Soleil has often been called a global third-world capital. Originally built to house manual laborers, Cité-Soleil is one of the youngest cities in Haiti. Its location at the mouth of several rivers (where they flow into Port-au-Prince Bay), has made the city's waterfront an integral part of its geography. In addition, Toussaint L'Ouverture International Airport was the first municipal commercial airport in Haiti, and today is its busiest. Several leading companies have had their headquarters in Cité-Soleil, including Hasco. A number of important education institutions are also in the city. Cité-Soleil is divided into two political wards, Varreux 1 and Varreux 2, and contains neighborhoods ranging in character from bustling urban districts to overcrowded slums. The city's Cité-Simone is the oldest housing project in Haiti and was originally home to the employees of the nation's largest sugar company, Hasco. History Cite Soleil is a young place. Fifty years ago, if you were to visit the land that is now known as the most dangerous place in the Caribbean, you would have found acres of sugar cane fields going almost up to the ocean’s edge. There would have been railroad tracks that were used to transport the sugarcane down to a processing factory, which was next to the wharfs where ships docked, waiting to take the sugar to overseas markets. The only residences were a group of state-built houses for government employees, and this settlement was known as Cite Simone, named after Simone Duvalier, the wife of the president-for-life, Francois Duvalier. Over the course of the next fifty years, rural Haiti went through a series of economic crises. Political instability, economic policies, and environmental degradation forced hundreds of thousands of rural Haitian families into a mass exodus from the countryside. Most of those families went to Port-au-Prince to search for work, and of those families, many ended up settling in Cite Soleil, where access to cheap housing and factory jobs was easiest. Several new housing projects failed to keep up with the ever-increasing population, and people began to build informal housing and shacks on whatever land they could, mostly in floodable plains by the sea. By the early 2000s, Cite Soleil had anywhere from 300,000 to half a million residents crammed into a strip of land that was less than 21 square kilometers (8 square miles). It had become the most densely-populated place in Haiti. Gang life But life was challenging for the hundreds of thousands of people trying to make a living by the sea. Many of the factories in and around Cite Soleil closed in the early 1990s due to political instability, and tens of thousands of young people found themselves without work. Economic frustrations and a sense of political marginalization led young men across Cite Soleil to take up arms. (They were called chime, bandi, mafia) but outsiders called them ‘gangs’ – and they had a complex role in the community. The state had been absent from Cite Soleil for decades, and so the gangs filled this void by providing protection, a justice system, and provide financial capital for community projects. But they also abuse their power: endangering their neighborhoods through wars with other gangs, diverting resources, manipulating their communities for political gain, and killing with impunity. Communities were afraid of their local gang leaders but also in many ways dependent on them, and they trusted their gangs more than the police or government. The power of the gangs grew through the years, until by 2004, the gangs were in full control of the territory of Cite Soleil. In 2006, the Haitian government decided to try to take back control of Cite Soleil with the help of the United Nations peacekeeping mission MINUSTAH. From 2004-2006, Cite Soleil was a war zone, barricaded off from the rest of the capital, with tanks in the streets and helicopters overhead. Many innocent civilians died during this period. By 2007, the main gang leaders of the time were either killed, in prison or in exile, and the state regained some control. However, the underlying socio-economic and political conditions that created the gangs to begin with were not solved, and so the gangs themselves continued to exist. In addition, the violence of the 2004-2006 period left Cite Soleil with a serious stigma, where most of Haiti thought of Soleyans as gangsters and criminals. This further isolated Cite Soleil from the rest of the country, and made it challenging for young Soleyans to find work in or out of Cite Soleil. Cite Soleil remains to this day the most marginalized area in the country,. Cite Soleil is the only municipality in Port au Prince without two functioning state schools, without a bank, without a gas station, without a youth center, without a professional school, without a university. , Haiti]] Geography Cité-Soleil is located in northwestern Port-au-Prince County on the northeastern shores of Port-au-Prince Bay. According to the census bureau, the city had a total area of 8.42 square miles (21.81 km2). It has the third-smallest land area among the 145 most populous cities in Haiti, behind neighboring. The city's altitude is at 0 (sea level). Cité-Soleil is essentially a large basin sloping towards the Port-au-Prince Bay with land dotted by meandering streams. Historically, Cité-Soleil's has been slated for industrial and agricultural purposes. In the mid 20th century, public housing was erected to house the sugar factory workers. Until the mid 20th century, the land on Cité-Soleil was reluctant to develop, as the plains were essentially wilderness, with a few dumps, warehouses, and cemeteries on their edges. During the 20th century, the government was able to reclaim acres of the land for the construction of Cité-Simone, as well as the growth of the adjacent lands. Cité-Soleil is surrounded by residential suburbs to the north, the international airport to the east, dense urban areas to the south, and Port-au-Prince Bay to the west. When Cité-Soleil was founded in 1950, most of the early building was around the mouth of the river, in the vicinity of Cité-Simone. The overall grade of the city's built-up areas is relatively consistent with the natural flatness of its overall natural geography, generally exhibiting only slight differentiation otherwise. The average land elevation is 0 ft, sea level. The Avenue de Soleil is the central business district, but Cité-Soleil is also a city of neighborhoods. Avenue de la Americans runs adjacent to a large portion of the waterfront and parallel to Route Nationale #1. Some of the developments along these parts include Boston, La Saline, and Bois Neuf, Brooklyn and Ti Haiti. Neighborhoods Cité Soleil is divided into two communal sections: 1re Section des Varreux Localities: Bassan, Blanchard, '''Cité-Soleil', Damiens, Duvivier, Fontaine, Jammeau, Menelas, Mouline, Sarthe, Terre Noire, Troutier.'' 2re Section des Varreux Localities: None Official records place the population at 252,960. Climate Cité Soleil's climate is classified as tropical. The summers here have a good deal of rainfall, while the winters have very little. This climate is considered to be Aw (Aw = Tropical savanna climate or tropical wet and dry climate. In essence, a tropical savanna climate tends to either see less rainfall than a tropical monsoon climate or have a more pronounced dry season) according to the Köppen-Geiger climate classification. In Cité Soleil, the average annual temperature is 26.7 °C (80°F). The average annual rainfall is 1144 mm (45 inches). (Climograph) Precipitation is the lowest in January, with an average of 28 mm (1 inch). Most of the precipitation here falls in May, averaging 194 mm (8 inches). (Temperature graph) At an average temperature of 28.4 °C (83°F), July is the hottest month of the year. January is the coldest month, with temperatures averaging 24.8 °C (77°F). Between the driest and wettest months, the difference in precipitation is 166 mm (6.5 inches). Throughout the year, temperatures vary by 3.6 °C (38°F). Environment Cité Soleil indulges in large doses of nearly every environmental threat imaginable. It is located at the western end of the principal runway of the National Airport and consequently withstands regular noise pollution. Its open areas are barren of vegetation and combine with tremendous accumulations of solid waste to generate significant dust on a daily basis. The drainage canals are largely fed from outside the city and can be assumed to carry pollutants from the manufacturing zones, principal roadways, petroleum storage facilities, and electrical generation plants which abut the eastern and southern borders of Cité Soleil. Groundwater can be found from 1 to 5 feet below ground and is fed by the surrounding ocean and by infiltration of the community's waste and polluted drains. The general lack of sanitary facilities combines with ever-present mounds of solid waste to generate a large and health-threatening population of flies and other pests. The entire area is then placed under enormous environmental pressure because the residents of Cité Soleil are directly exposed in their homes on a regular basis to the overflowing and flooding of the intensely polluted and regularly obstructed drainage canals. Michael Vedrine Category:Ouest, Haiti Category:Port-au-Prince Arrondissement